


Practical Astronomy

by apostategarbage



Series: Cullen/Male Loyalist Mage Trevelyan [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M, Oral Sex, check notes for details on spoilers!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 02:22:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2715422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apostategarbage/pseuds/apostategarbage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen has been called repressed and prudish in the past, but he’s lived around circle mages his entire adult life and he knows what they’re like. He isn’t naive, nor is he a complete fool, and he’s about to reply with something dismissive when the words just stick in his mouth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the 'Champions of the Just' quest, but PRETTY SAFE apart from that!

He’s handsome. Even when he was battered and unconscious it was obvious. Obvious enough, in fact, that Cullen had overheard Cassandra scolding Josephine for “inappropriate tittering” at his bedside.  
It is more obvious again, when he is up and about and the fuss over him has settled. Cullen sees him chatting to Cassandra, apparently unconcerned that she is practically pointing her sword at him.

"You’re delightful," he tells her, grinning. She protests, of course. Cullen is not sure delightful is quite the word he’d choose for her (determined, he thinks, or fierce) but as the Herald gives his farewell and turns his back, Cullen catches a faint smile on Cassandra’s lips before she goes back to hammering away at the practise dummy.  
Trevelyan wanders over to Cullen, eyeing the troops as he comes, with the look of a man who knows as much about sword play as a soldier knows about magic.

"This looks like it’s going well," he says. Cullen gives a nod. It actually isn’t going all that well at the moment - too many green recruits with experienced ones spread too thinly across them - but Cullen is sure Trevelyan has enough to worry about.

Is it the Herald, Trevelyan, or Lord Trevelyan? First Enchanter, My Lord, Your Worship or even a Ser?  
One thing Cullen misses about Kirkwall is the honorifics: messere for your betters, serah for everyone else; it made life far easier.

The Herald sticks out his hand, “We haven’t spoken properly yet,” he says.

Cullen then finds himself subject to something of a grilling. Trevelyan (“You do know I have a perfectly reasonable given name, don’t you Commander?”) noses about everything, from his family, to his life as a Templar, to his time in Kirkwall. He is particularly interested in Cullen’s time at Kinloch Hold; the Templars at Ostwick hadn’t had much to do with their charges, and he’d always been curious about the order.

"There’s only so much time you can spend with the same armful of people watching you in total silence, isn’t there? Your mind wanders. I’ve always wondered what you people get up to in your spare time."

Cullen gives him a loose idea of a Templar’s day, and only refuses to answer once Trevelyan questions him about the fall of the Ferelden circle. Clearly sensing a pinched nerve, Trevelyan mercifully asks about the troops, and Cullen finds himself rambling.

"Forgive me," he says, realising how long he must have run on, "You aren’t here for a lecture."

Trevelyan laughs. “I was rather enjoying it,” he says. He flashes Cullen a smile. Their eyes meet, and Trevelyan’s grin goes all lopsided. He makes a comment about Cullen being easy to listen to, and Cullen realises he’s being flirted with.

Cullen has been called repressed and prudish in the past, but he’s lived around circle mages his entire adult life and he knows what they’re like. He isn’t naive, nor is he a complete fool, and he’s about to reply with something dismissive when the words just stick in his mouth.  
The old stutter is gone for the most part, but its ghost remains in what he calls his ‘stop’. He clears his throat and murmurs something, then takes his leave, citing a phantom soldier gripping the handle of his greatsword incorrectly as the cause.

*

Cassandra is irritable at dinner (a meal that seems to be taken in the war room now, while they draft letters and strategize) stabbing at her potatoes instead of eating them. She had arrived back from the Hinterlands just hours ago, soaked through, bickering with Trevelyan about something. Cullen, only half trying not to eavesdrop, hears the words “watchtowers”, “expensive” and “refugees” as well as “horse” more times than he can count.

 

"Is there something troubling you?" tries Leliana. Cassandra answers with a hollow snort. She rattles off the list of innocuous tasks they were given in the Hinterlands, how they’d spent days running around hunting ram, digging up supply caches, fighting untold numbers of templars and demons and apostates. When they’d finally gotten to the horse master, he’d wanted more favours.

"We are the Inquisition," she says, "Not a nanny."

So Trevelyan had had them spend their last day in the Hinterlands for a few weeks (the Val Royeaux visit looming over them like a storm cloud) scouting out locations for watchtowers.

"Which the Inquisition are expected to build, of course," she grumbles. "He has no concept of the value of gold, or our time, and he thinks he can joke or flirt his way out of every argument, and it is infuriating." She sets down her fork and rubs the bridge of her nose. "The Herald of Andraste was a funny mage. That’s what they’re going to say. He was a funny mage, and the right hand of the Divine strangled him before he got a chance to close the Breach. We simply cannot help every little person at a time like this and he doesn’t seem to understand _why_." She looks exhausted, and slumps in her chair. She seems to sense the comforting words before they are offered and excuses herself to her quarters, taking her plate with her.

"Perhaps one of us should speak with the Herald," says Josephine. "Ask him to take this a little more seriously."

"I’ll talk to him," Cullen offers. "Mage or lordling or no, he needs an attitude adjustment."

The Herald usually takes his meals with Solas and Varric in the tavern, but he is absent. Varric informs Cullen the herald is “all tuckered out” and was escorted to his cabin after he fell asleep at the table.  
And when Cullen finds him, he is out cold, face down on his bed, above the sheets wearing his trousers but not his shirt. His hair has half fallen out of its braids, and Cullen wonders, in passing, how long it is down.

"My lord," Cullen tries. Trevelyan does not even stir. Cullen creeps closer, eyes gliding briefly over Trevelyan’s brown, freckled back. He is a little taller than Cullen, but far slimmer, and his skin looks smooth and soft and warm. 

"Lord Trevelyan," he says, again, louder and nearer now. Trevelyan groans, long and slow, stretching like a cat as he rolls onto his back, skin tugging taut over his stomach and his ribs. There’s this stringy, wiry musculature there, and Cullen finds his gaze hovering at the dip of Trevelyan’s bellybutton, following the trail of black hair that emerges from the waistband of his trousers and travels to the flat of his chest.

"Hello," he grumbles. He sits up and begins tucking his stray hair haphazardly back into place.

"My Lord," Cullen begins (Trevelyan has long since given up correcting him) "I need to speak with you."

"I’m in trouble, then?"

"Yes."

And so Cullen explains. Time is gold, gold is scarce, and though influence must be spread, the Inquisition must be wise with who it helps. And yes we do need the horses but perhaps you should have bartered rather than agreeing to build three watchtowers on the farmers’ behalf. And perhaps this would have been far easier for Cassandra to swallow if you deigned to treat her with a little more respect. No, there’s nothing wrong with a joke here and there, when appropriate, but in the field, when lives are at stake and one of your most valuable people is angry and trying to help you, it is not.

Trevelyan thinks on this for a moment and folds his arms over his chest.

"I shall apologise to Cassandra in the morning," he says. He tells Cullen he often forgets money is finite, and explains he means no disrespect when he makes his jokes. He calls it ‘gallows humour,’ says it helps him cope with the madness. He’s been stressed, he’s felt a little clouded, though it’s no excuse and he shall listen and conduct himself with more decorum in the field from now on.

"Of course, I shall have to be twice as insufferable when I’m here," he says.

*

Trevelyan comes to watch the troops practise, wrapped up in some lumpy knitwear and clutching two mugs of hot tea. He thrusts one into Cullen’s empty hands. 

He looks out of place in the cold. His colouring is so warm, and his freckles haven’t faded; he belongs in fine, thin, cottons on the coast of somewhere sunny, not in cumbersome wools half way up a Ferelden mountain.

Cullen always found the Free Marches far too warm for his liking, and though he can’t feel his ears or the tip of his nose, he’d take Haven over the heat of the Gallows courtyard any day.

Trevelyan asks for an update, sounding a little stuffy, his eyes sore and red and Cullen has very little to tell. This is, of course, simply pretence for more personal questions.  
Trevelyan asks Cullen if he left anyone behind in Kirkwall. The short answer is no, but Cullen gives him the long one “few friends, poor company.”

"I find it hard to believe you could ever be poor company," says Trevelyan, smiling over the lip of his mug.

"And I find it hard to believe anyone could find my company as enrapturing as you claim to.”

"I just like looking at your hair. Though… I suppose," Trevelyan begins, "It’s a little… Odd not being around Templars all the time," he punctuates with a sip of his tea. "I suppose I find you quite comforting."  
Cullen repeats that. Comforting. "You seem like you’d have been one of the good ones," says Trevelyan.

At Kinloch Hold he was. He might have spent years pathetically infatuated with Amell, but he never touched her. Never touched any of the others. Immediately reported any of his fellows as soon as they did something even remotely untoward. He let the older apprentices have their unsanctioned books and jewellery and let the younger ones sneak sweets from the kitchen.  
At Kirkwall he wasn’t. He thought himself fair, but in his early years he was angry and bitter and he took it out on the mages who hardly deserved it. The cruelty he let his fellow Templars enact when they played to his paranoia still astounded him. He was not in his right mind for years after Ferelden; most of what he did and said in that time still shames him.

He realises he has been silent for a while.

"I er… I was too harsh in Kirkwall. After what had happened in Ferelden," he says, hoping Trevelyan will leave it there. He does. He nods, sips his tea.

"I never had a problem with Templars. Ostwick was only a small circle, and I suppose coming from the family I do ensured my safety, should anyone get any ideas," Trevelyan sighs. "I was so shocked when we rebelled. I was too wrapped up in my own little world to notice any dissent in the ranks.”

"I imagine you were busy. You’re awfully young for a First Enchanter," Cullen says. Trevelyan wrinkles his nose. They are around the same age, but all the First Enchanters Cullen has ever known have been, at least, in their sixties rather than just pushing forty. 

" _Acting_ First Enchanter, I never actually did the job properly. After our Circle fell, I was the only loyal Senior Enchanter left. Whoever didn’t follow me to the Conclave followed the Libertarians to Tevinter. The title was just a formality, really,” he laughs, suddenly. “Though I make it sound as if I didn’t spend a good decade working out how I could best worm my way into that office. Maker’s tears, if you’d met me a few years ago,” he shakes his head. 

“It’s not… Entirely dissimilar to the way I ended up as Knight Commander of Kirkwall,” Cullen sighs. “Messily and under technicality.”

“Come, now, at least you were second in command. I’m just a noble backbiter with ideas far above his station,” he holds up his palm and wiggles his fingers. “And a glowing hand – which apparently qualifies me as the Herald of Andraste. So I suppose First Enchanter is a mere trifle by comparison.” Trevelyan lowers his palm and stares at it. “You don’t believe in all this, do you?”

He likes Cassandra’s line of thinking – whether Andraste and the Maker were behind all of this, or not, Trevelyan was exactly what they needed at exactly the right time. Cullen had been a devout man at one time, now, he is _less_ so, but he would be lying if he didn’t say that yes, he did have some belief in all of this. Perhaps Trevelyan hadn’t been handed to them by Andraste herself, but it couldn’t have all been coincidence – it couldn’t.

“I… Would like to think the Maker had a hand in this.”

He snorts. “A hand. Good one.”

Cullen had not been joking. 

 

*

 

Trevelyan isn’t right after dealing with the Templars. He spends a lot of time fussing over Cole, bickering with Solas, and in intense, hushed conversation with Vivienne. 

Cullen overhears them one night as he leaves Josephine’s office. Trevelyan confesses he feels like a traitor for going to the Templars, but the idea of tens of rebel mages running around Haven with only a handful of Templars…

“It’s… It couldn’t have gone well, could it?”

“It was a risk you could not have afforded to take,” she says. There’s no sugary ‘darling’ tacked to the end or even a note of sarcasm. “Now we have their Lyrium secured, the Templars are the best alliance we could have asked for.”

Cullen feels guilt for it, but he presses his back into the doorway of Josephine’s office and listens.

“But leaving Fiona at the mercy of that Magister-”

“If she wishes to join the Venatori, and betray Thedas, let her. If that woman had had a shred of sense she’d never had contacted Tevinter.”

Trevelyan is silent for a moment. He sighs, and Cullen hears the splash of liquid into a goblet. Someone sips, softly. “How is this so easy for you?” he asks.

Then Vivienne is quiet too. “It isn’t,” she says. “You and I both know there were good people in Redcliffe. Good people often make poor decisions. They made their choice, and we’ve made ours, and we shall all bare our respective consequences.” The bottle glugs again. “Drink up, my dear, you’ve had a long week.”

Trevelyan thanks her and Cullen chooses this moment to leave his doorway, making a show of opening and shutting Josephine’s door to announce himself, and practically stomping through the hall of the chantry. He feigns surprise at seeing Vivienne and the Herald here so late. They have themselves nestled among a pile of prayer cushions; candles and a bottle of wine would almost have the picture romantic, were it not for how exhausted they both look. The air is so much warmer around them.

“We’re mulling over the events of the last week, darling. Did you hear Josie has gotten a source of Lyrium secured for our Templars?”

“She was just telling me,” says Cullen. Josephine works frighteningly quickly, and knows everyone. Cullen hardly knows how she keeps track of it all.

“Would you like to join us, Commander?” Trevelyan asks. Cullen leans against a pillar, but does not sit down, and starts to answer in the negative. Trevelyan tosses a pillow at him, and tugs him to the floor any way, and Vivienne produces a third goblet, which the dregs of the bottle are dumped into. One glass couldn’t hurt.

“The last of it,” sighs Vivienne. “I found it in the cellar: I’m not usually one for drinking things I come upon in basements, but I recognised the label.” 

As if Cullen would care. He takes a mouthful of the wine, and finds it sharp and vinegary. 

“It’s not great, is it?” says Trevelyan. He sighs and takes a large gulp. “But then, nothing’s great at the moment. Let me tell you, being dragged through your own head by an envy demon is not a comfortable experience. You stabbed me, you know! In my head,” Cullen is surprised to find Trevelyan pointing at him. “Leliana slit your throat, but you stabbed me!”

“I’m… Sorry?”

Trevelyan shakes his head, his voice momentarily frantic. “I hate the Fade. That was worse than my Harrowing… I… Used to have nightmares, constantly, as a little boy, and that was-” he cuts himself off and drains his glass, a dribble of wine running down his lip, his chin, then his neck. “Well it hardly matters now. We have our Templars.” 

Cullen is allowed to finish his goblet, and Vivienne fills the silence, delivering a rehearsed sounding monologue about the value of Templar’s work. Cullen doesn’t miss the odd, worried glances she shoots at Trevelyan, who is picking at the skin of his fingers and terribly quiet.

“Perhaps it’s time we put you to bed, darling,” says Vivienne, the moment Cullen finishes his drink. “Commander, if you’d escort him to his cabin.”

Trevelyan allows himself to be hauled to his feet, and insists he isn’t drunk, just exhausted. Trevelyan admits, as Cullen walks him (arm around a surprisingly solid shoulder) that he is half cut, as if it’s a secret. He laughs soft, and Cullen sees it in the air, watches it puff out into the night, white and thin, before it dissipates. Here and gone; Trevelyan is grim beneath his arm again, slumping and sad. They reach the cabin.

Cullen deposits Trevelyan on his bed, and busies himself quelling the last embers of the fire, while Trevelyan dumps his jacket on the floor. Cullen watches him try to unfasten his shirt with long, clumsy fingers, fumbling with the laces and swearing loudly. 

Trevelyan is surprising foul mouthed for someone so softly spoken; he speaks with that cut glass, circle mage, common-tongue that Cullen has never quite mastered. Trevelyan starts to pull at the laces blindly, so hard that he makes the knots tighter, and almost without thinking Cullen shuffles over, still on his knees. He bats Trevelyan’s hands away and begins to unknot the shirt, in rather a mess now. 

Cullen catches a flash of tooth beneath wine stained lips, and the bob of an Adam’s apple.

The air between them just thickened, and there’s this tickling feeling in the meat of Cullen’s thighs and the pit of his stomach. 

He doesn’t have a word for it, but he knows this feeling. When something unspoken clicks between a pair of people, and each knows what the other wants but neither is bold enough to take the plunge. He doesn’t know it well, but he knows it. 

His experience is limited to three women: a tavern girl at Greenfell who’d been his first, and hadn’t hidden her pity; another Templar at Kirkwall, who felt they had made a mistake, and had herself transferred to Starkhaven; and an elf, whose company he had paid for in a truly desperate moment. He has always had curiosities about men, but has always lacked the nerve to seek the company of one. The idea became part of a collection of secret thoughts he has stashed away for cold, lonely nights. 

Cullen continues his work with the shirt laces, bares skin and hair and freckles, and swears he sees a flush creep up Trevelyan’s throat.

Cullen’s hands tremble (not for a lack of Lyrium, for once) and where he expects panic and sickness to come, it just… doesn’t. Sex was soured when he was introduced to it by the demon who held him captive at the circle. He was assaulted, for what felt like weeks, by a shade of Amell, clad in thin, clingy robes, whispering sweet nothings and pawing at him. She begged for him for a small eternity, before she grew cruel and rough. She made him hard and sick with shame, and it took a long time for Cullen to disentangle arousal from terror and guilt.

But here he is, on his knees, his lips inches from a mage’s and he feels fine. Cullen’s fingers go slack in the shirt’s laces and hook into its neckline, he lifts his chin, and Trevelyan dips his. There’s an odd moment of eye contact, their lips just brush, whispering against each other, noses bumping.

Trevelyan nudges his top lip between Cullen’s, and sucks all firm and well-practised. He tastes of red wine and spit and it’s not the most pleasant combination, but Cullen feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He hardly knows what to do with himself, and though he knots his fingers into the neck of Trevelyan’s shirt and pulls him closer, Trevelyan leads the kiss. 

Cullen settles his free hand on Trevelyan’s thigh, and fails to do anything about it, and he doesn’t know where he should touch, or if he should touch at all, and his knees are starting to ache and Trevelyan is pulling vaguely at the catches of Cullen’s armour. Then he stops, and pulls away.

“You weren’t kissing,” he says. Cullen can feel his ears and his cheeks burning. He is blushing like a boy and he wonders if his stammer will reappear. Trevelyan rubs the bridge of his nose. “You don’t have to do this.”

“But I might like to,” Cullen mutters. Trevelyan raises an eyebrow at ‘might’, and dislodges Cullen’s hand from his thigh, patting the bed next to him. Cullen’s knees pop as he stands, and he feels so foolish now he can’t bring himself to look anywhere near Trevelyan. The bed creaks under his weight, and he keeps his eyes fixed across the room, on a writing desk.

“Have you ever even been with a man?”

“I… No,” Cullen admits. “I’ve barely been with women.” He can count the amount of times on two hands. Trevelyan huffs softly, and Cullen feels him move, shuffling inches away.

“Look, I’ve… I’m exhausted and I’ve had a few drinks and…”

“I’m sorry,” Cullen blurts, immediately. He feels ridiculous – he _is_ ridiculous, to think he could ever just do something like this, like a normal person. 

“No. No, there’s no need to apologise, I just…” Trevelyan pats his hand; Cullen feels patronised. “I think you’d regret it. And I’m not sure it’s worth compromising our working relationship for a silly fling - given the stakes.”

“You’re probably right.” He _is_ right. “This was terribly unprofessional of me, and I… I don’t know, I wasn’t thinking properly.”

“It’s hardly your fault, my behaviour hasn’t exactly been…” Cullen makes out a vague hand gesture from the corner of his eye. “Let’s just forget this happened. A momentary lapse in judgement. That’s all.”

“Of course. I... Shall take my leave.” Cullen stands, and goes to the door. He looks at the spot above the bed rather than the man upon it when he says farewell. “Goodnight then, my lord.”

“Commander,” says Trevelyan.

Cullen closes the door behind him, and falls back against it, for a moment. He waits, face still burning, heart pounding, fingers shaking.

He hears Trevelyan swear, and it’s with frustration and disappointment. Cullen kicks the dirt at his feet, and stomps off to his own quarters, knowing he shan’t sleep well for days.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers for Cullen's character quest-thingy

It is completely unreasonable to blame Leliana for this, but Cullen does it any way. He snarls at her, and she snarls back, and when Josephine steps between them they turn their frustrations on her. Cassandra tells them all to shut up so they all tell Cassandra to shut up. They only manage it when Sera throws a boot at them and demands they give it a rest. 

“We’ve got normal people here, yeah? Your serving folk who couldn’t give a shit who didn’t put spies where. Just let them sleep!” And then a final, “Fuck’s sake!” accompanied by another flying boot.

Josephine and Leliana settle down at the opposite end of the camp to Cullen and Cassandra.

Cassandra tells him that he probably owes Leliana an apology; for the moment, he doesn’t care. It’s so cold, and the few mages they have can only keep the camp so warm and under so many protective charms before they exhaust themselves. Dorian (who arrived in blaze minutes before Corypheus) drops where he stands after casting something he assures them will keep everyone warm and last for hours. He is a Magister’s son, and oddly charming; Cassandra and Vivienne pad around him like a pair of suspicious cats.

Honestly, the presence of any additional mage is a blessing. Cullen never thought he would see a day where he’d give one of his fingers for a few more mages – but then he also never thought he’d see a Darkspawn Magister siege Haven on the back of an arch demon. He tells Cassandra this, and she snorts.

“There truly is a first time for everything.”

Trevelyan lies unconscious a yard away, with a nasty gash in his eyebrow and three frostbitten toes that the healers say will have to be removed. His breathing is laboured, and though the healers also say he’ll certainly live, they watch him constantly. 

Cullen misses him. There have been no more visits to the training grounds with tea and smiles since the Incident, only stiff professional conversations with the war table between them.

It is hard to see him like this, hard for everyone, and Cullen begs the Maker that he doesn’t catch pneumonia or some other infection-come-death-sentence. 

Solas paces nearby. Cullen watches him, grim, silent spectre, jaw bone dangling from his neck, feet thudding soft against the ground as he circles Trevelyan’s bed roll. He knows something. Solas is always withholding _something_ but he’s doing a very poor job of hiding it at the moment and Cullen just hopes it’s something _useful_ , only for the Herald’s ears.

Cassandra excuses herself to her bedroll, and leaves Cullen alone by the fire they made. They’re warm enough, thanks to the mages, but not so warm they can do without a fire. Plus, it gives him something to poke as he sits on the ground and tries not to wonder what on Earth they’re going to do now Haven is gone.

 _An itch, always an itch, sometimes, pain, but always the itch_. A small and distant voice carries on the wind and echoes inside Cullen’s head. He is going mad now, how inconvenient. 

_Work, work, work, and worry, worry, worry, and when silence comes it’s all itchy and demons and misery and sad, secret love gone bitter. Try to mumble her name softly in the dark, and find his instead. Flush at the sight of red wine and find the taste of him lingers like a good meal. ‘Silly fling’ he says, ‘terribly unprofessional’ comes the reply, and swims around in the air for days. No more tea. Just a man alone and afraid, hand on the hilt of his sword._

Cole’s face snaps into focus. Cole is… the young man they found with the Templars, isn’t he? Cullen can’t always see him, nor can he always remember having met him, and he’s sure that bothers him, but for the moment he can’t recall why.

“You must stop looking at love like other men look at the stars,” says Cole.

“Excuse me?”

“Something beautiful, at great distance. Not for you.” Cole stares at him in earnest. His eyes are a watery blue, and his chin is weak, and Cullen cannot recollect having noticed that before. Did he always wear that ridiculous hat? “I can make it go away. Inside, you’re like a rough sea, you’re twisting and always moving, never peaceful. I can make it go away, I can-”

Cullen draws his sword. He knows an offer from a demon when he hears one, he knows this feeling, this slight unreality, this inability to focus. He stands, and put’s the blade to Cole’s throat. Solas shouts, off in the distance and…

He’s standing with his sword drawn. Where did Cassandra go? Cullen drops his arm, and spins on the spot. He… Doesn’t remember standing up. Solas appears at his side.

“You look exhausted, Commander,” he says.

“I… I suppose I am,” Cullen says. “I could have sworn I was sitting down a moment ago.”

“You were. You nodded off, and then got up. I assumed you’d heard something. Do you sleep walk?”

He used to, as a boy. “Not for a long time, but-”

“Well there you have it. Get yourself to sleep, Commander, we’ll have much to do in the morning.”

 

*

Cullen and Jospehine walk back from their meeting with Leliana together. Cullen is not really used to the company of high born ladies, and he always feels as if she should be chaperoned with him. Cullen is hardly from peasant stock, but it feels rather as if he is when he’s with her.

She is quite happy to escort him back to his office, reading from the parchment clipped to her tablet. The candle’s flame flutters in the brisk night air, and the moon hangs low behind the mountain, colouring Skyhold’s stone silver.

“We have a dwarf coming to proceed over the stone masonry who should arrive in… A week, weather permitting, and so on… A Bann is complaining of undead in his farmlands, and the Inquisitor would like you to send… Someone and… Varric would like us both to attend his card game tomorrow, though understands if you would rather keep your dignity and your gold,” Josephine grins, and stops at the door of his office, scanning her papers as Cullen unlocks his door. “And that is everything for today!” she says cheerfully. She taps her teeth with the tip of her quill.

“Thank you, Lady Montilyet. Rest assured, I intend to clean out everyone’s pockets tomorrow evening,” says Cullen, thoroughly defiant.

“And I intend to fly back to my office, it doesn’t mean it’ll happen,” Jospehine looks terribly smug, and Cullen hears her laugh when he closes his door in her face. 

His office is… A work in progress. He has bookshelves and a desk, but no chair. There are still odd bits of stone, and rubble all over the place, but he did manage to get a bed build in the loft, and a ladder tall enough to reach it, so at least he doesn’t have to bunk up with Varric and the Iron Bull any more. 

He has no paperwork at the moment (though he’s sure that’ll change in the coming weeks) and is currently using a salvaged practise dummy as a makeshift armour stand.

He does a loop around the room and considers rolling out the rug Cassandra found him, or clearing some of the wood down to the scrap pile they’ve built in the garden, but he decides against it. There are a few salvaged books that have been calling his name; his bed is soft and his neck aches. He hopes _someone_ thought to fill his wash basin for him, because he certainly didn’t remember. 

He strips himself of his plate and the leathers he wears beneath, and slips on the cotton shirt and trousers he’d slung through the rungs on his ladder for himself that morning. He rolls up his sleeves, grabs the book on the Exalted March against Starkhaven, and ascends the ladder with it clamped between his teeth.

He spits it into his waiting hands, and takes a few steps toward his bed before he realises he is not alone.

Trevelyan sits (casually dressed and bootless) cross legged on the bed and grins when Cullen finally spots him. Cullen drops his book.

“Inquisitor?”

“I have _never_ seen you out of your armour,” he says, lightly. His eyes run over Cullen’s torso and he feels half naked. He folds his arms over his chest, trying to look intimidating but feeling as if he is failing. 

“How long have you been up there?”

“I got here a few minutes before you did,” he sounds sheepish, and he should. Cullen had his doors locked. “There’s a dirty great hole in your roof, you know? And you should at least move this wood to a different room, it’s a trip hazard.”

“It is.”

“I wanted to clear the air,” he says. The gash on Trevelyan’s head has been healed to a pale, lumpy scar, and Cullen doubts that chunk of his eyebrow will ever grow back. Cullen’s beard refuses to grow through the scar on his lip, and he has bald patches on his legs and arms where he has the odd old welt or burn mark. 

“I see.”

“But I don’t know what to say.” Trevelyan’s eyes are fixed on Cullen’s arms, and the tips of his ears are red. “We’ve both been very busy over the last couple of weeks, but. I mean, obviously… Things have been odd between us,” he clears his throat. “I wanted to say that I’m sorry. For… Seeming like I was leading you on? You may not have noticed, but I was paying you special attention. And obviously I find you very attractive, but… I didn’t think you would _do_ anything, and when you did… I… I thought you’d get all… I didn’t want to… Make things any more difficult for you than they probably are, I suppose? But, upon reflection, that probably wasn’t my choice to make.” He shrugs. “So… If you’ll have me.”

“I’m sorry, are you… p-p-p,” Propositioning. He shouldn’t have picked a word with so many Ps. Cullen is mortified. Cullen is seventeen again. He blinks. “Are you, asking me,” (he clicks on the K, but manages the rest without incident,) “T-to sleep with you?”

“Obviously. We both clearly want to, It’ll get it out of our systems, at least.”

Cullen feels a little cheapened by the wording. Courtship (if that’s what this can be called) never seems to go quite the way Cullen think it should. That intense, clandestine kiss in Haven – that was right. It was wordless and impulsive; it was romantic.

Cullen does not do things like this. People don’t simply go to his bed and expect him to fall in behind. He doesn’t just _sleep_ with people, he needs excuses, he needs reasons. He wonders, for a moment, why attraction can’t be reason enough.

Cullen crosses the room. His bare feet thud and peel on the wood, and though his knees feel a little weak, he has his mind set. Trevelyan seems to know what’s about to come, he wets his lips and Cullen gets a glimpse of a smirk before their faces are too close for focus. It’s all mouth then, and Cullen knows he’s being clumsy and too wet. Their teeth click, Trevelyan bites down on his lip and pulls him on top by his shirt. There’s some _rolling around_ , Cullen having thoroughly lost control of the situation and they end up with Trevelyan’s shoulders half propped up on the headboard (it hardly looks comfortable) with Cullen on his knees, hovering over Trevelyan’s stomach. Cullen is¬ hard already, and he can tell he’s gone that ridiculous shade of red he goes.

Trevelyan licks his lips, smiles lopsided and Cullen swallows, and stays stiff. He wants to do something: to touch or, kiss, or anything other than stare. Trevelyan stretches his arms and slides his hands down the back of Cullen’s trousers, past his smalls, and grabs Cullen’s arse like a starved child digging into a cake.

Cullen gasps, and _squeaks_ , and Trevelyan mumbles he’s been wanting to do that for months. With a surprising strength, Trevelyan drags Cullen closer (him shuffling awkwardly on his knees), till his crotch is inches away from Trevelyan’s mouth.

“That was quick,” Trevelyan says. Cullen goes to apologise, but, mercifully, before he can speak, Trevelyan leans forward and noses at his cock through his trousers. Cullen shudders at the contact and Trevelyan squeezes, then cranes his neck and nuzzles the half inch of flesh left bare by his clothes. “Take it off,” he says, bumping at the hem of Cullen’s shirt. So Cullen does. 

He’s still not used to thinking on his feet, but he’s excellent at following orders. 

Trevelyan drags him the last couple of inches closer, and kisses Cullen’s belly, all wet and toothy. He finally removes his hands from Cullen’s backside, and rubs them greedily up his torso. He finds Cullen’s nipples and rubs them with both thumbs. A jolt runs through him – he didn’t realise he’d feel anything there. It’s the shock of it more than the pleasure itself, but he groans and his stomach muscles twitch beneath Trevelyan’s lips.

Cullen feels his cock twitch in his trousers, he flicks his hips and it bumps Trevelyan’s neck. This is apparently the only hint he needs. His hands travel southward again, (“Tip your hips back, a little,” he says, so Cullen does,) and pull Cullen’s smalls and trousers down with one movement. Cullen feels him adjusting his position a little.

Cullen can’t remember shutting his eyes, so he opens them, just a crack. Trevelyan is there, hand wrapping around the base of Cullen’s cock, wetting his lips and staring up, while Cullen stares down. He huffs and looks away as if he’d made eye contact with a stranger, and Trevelyan chuckles.

“Forward again, ease yourself in, I’ll help,” he says. He places his free hand in the small of Cullen’s back, and rubs a circle into the base of his spine. Trevelyan’s eyes flutter shut and he opens his mouth. Cullen is too shy to watch so he shuts his eyes as well, braces his hands on the headboard.

It’s wet and warm and soft, and Cullen has had his cock sucked once before, but he hardly remembers the feeling. He knows Trevelyan is _good_ at it, but Cullen can hardly concentrate on any one sensation for longer than a few seconds before there’s something new. There’s the slide of Trevelyan’s lips as they travel down his shaft, then it’s his tongue, then hot, then wet, and when he starts sucking it’s all a little too much.

Cullen lasts long enough for Trevelyan to let go of his cock, to ease Cullen down his throat, till his nose is buried in Cullen’s hair. His hands have found their way to Cullen’s arse again, and Cullen feels him breathe and groan softly. He comes, no time to warn, fingers aching and turning white on the wood of the bedframe. His toes curl, and he grunts (spending most of his life in shared rooms leaves a man quiet) spilling down Trevelyan’s throat and feeling him swallow. 

He manages, somehow to pull out, and flop down sideways on the bed in one relatively smooth motion. He lands on his back, and tugs up his trousers, then lets himself melt into the feather quilt. This bone-deep peace washes over him, and he feels like he could drift off right there.

Trevelyan pants beside him and Cullen spares him a glance, finds him wriggling out of his trousers. Cullen catches a glimpse of an erection before opting to stare out at the hole in his ceiling. 

The weight shifts on the bed, and Trevelyan is back in his eye line, and whipping off his own shirt. He looks Cullen over gratefully, and begins touching himself, chewing his lip and throwing his head back. Cullen feels bold. He licks his palm and bats Trevelyan’s hand away from his cock, and drinks in the appreciative rumble from his throat. Trevelyan even tries to protest – a weak “You don’t have to,” coming between soft moans. 

He comes on Cullen’s chest and licks it clean, still shivering and sighing with the aftershocks. Cullen is so exhausted he barely registers that he’s half hard. Trevelyan grins, “Again?” he asks. Cullen shakes his head. Trevelyan kisses him, his previous finesse vanished, and Cullen tastes cum, salty and bitter. 

He crawls under the covers, and Trevelyan follows. Cullen feels is wet kisses on his neck before he falls asleep. 

*

He is a distraction. Sometimes Cullen needs it. He wakes up sweating, fingers twisted up in the sheets, grinding his teeth or chewing the inside of his mouth - in Haven he’d simply bare it, now he need only cross a courtyard to make it go away.  
Trevelyan has “magic fingers”. He rubs the knots out of Cullen’s neck and back, hands warm like rocks in a hot spring, slick with the same oil he puts in his hair. He never asks questions - he needn’t. Trevelyan needs his own distractions (he turns up in Cullen’s loft, trembling, all clammy skin and shaking breath) and Cullen is happy to provide. He mumbles that he “can’t sleep” sometimes; once, very, very softly says the word “demons” then “never mind”. Cullen doesn’t press about it. Trevelyan doesn’t press him about Lyrium or Ferelden or Kirkwall.  
But then there are days when Cullen can barely think for him. Trevelyan will catch his eye at the war table, and Cullen will spend the remainder of the day mindlessly barking orders, with his head in his bed. And then come the cock ups. Just little mistakes - a report he has to redo; the odd accident with his sword; an ill-considered solution for one of their war table problems. And it’s all because he can’t seem to stop his mind from wandering.  
He sees it as a personal failure. And part of him knows that is ridiculous. Men are allowed to want, men are allowed to get cloudy now and again, to be happy. But he is not a man, he is a Templar and a Commander and a Champion and an armful of other titles he is unable to live up to properly. He is such a base creature, at heart. Such a weak, physical thing. He wants for only for rest, food and flesh; when he doesn’t want for flesh, he wants for Lyrium.  
Cullen enters something of a vicious circle. He wants Lyrium, he goes to Trevelyan, he wants Trevelyan more. He gets distracted on the job, he makes mistakes, he feels awful, he wants Lyrium, he goes to Trevelyan.  
After years of what a healer smugly named “Abuse” he had known when he began that the Lyrium would take months – possibly over a year – to leave his system completely. The fact it seems to be getting worse could suggest the withdrawal period is almost over, but he could still be in for months of this. Months of cravings and pain and sickness – his only respite from which is an ill-advised relationship with the Herald of Bloody Andraste. Cullen’s head hurts when he thinks too hard on it.   
There is a Bad Say. A Worse Day in a Bad Week. He finds himself bent double over his desk, retching, shaking bodily. The pain is this strange, ringing down in his bones; he can’t not move, but every tiny quiver brings a little pain.  
Trevelyan is gone (for Maker knows how long this time) so there will be no one to join him in pretending this isn’t happening, and no gentle, clever hands to guide him through. He thinks about just taking it (he always thinks about taking it), finding a bottle and putting this nonsense to an end. No more pain, no more wanting, just having and dealing with the consequences.  
He has one dose. In a box in the bottom drawer of his desk, one dose. For emergencies.   
But Cassandra has the rest of their Lyrium stores locked up tight, and only her most trusted people know where it hides. He would have to beg her; she would say no.  
He begs her any way.

Instead of refusing right off the bat, she gives him a long look, then beckons him into the empty armoury.

“Why?” she says. “Do you actually want to start taking it again? Or is this just the withdrawal?”

Cullen glares at her. They both know the answer to that question.

“I cannot function properly without it,” he says. “Either I start taking it again, or you relieve me of command.”

“Cullen,” she begins, wearily, “Why don’t you wait for the Inquisitor to return? He’s more… Persuasive than I am, he might talk some sense into you.” 

He bristles; the words are out of his mouth before he can stop them. “What is that supposed to mean, exactly?” he snaps. 

Cassandra raises her eyebrows. “Nothing! You and I both defer to him. And he is your friend,” she says. Her eyebrows stay up, and Cullen cannot be bothered to argue, or excuse himself.

“Not a word,” he says. And leaves, and hopes she’ll chalk this entire display up to exhaustion. 

*

Cullen wakes from a fitful sleep to find snow floating through the hole in his roof. The snow won’t lie in the grounds, not with the glyphs and charms the mages have places, but even mages cannot command the heavens themselves. Cullen wipes a half melted snowflake from the tip of his nose, and rolls to the opposite side of the bed. He is feverish, sweating, but his skin is cold and clammy. Cassandra and one of his lieutenants have been performing his duties between them for the last few days. “The Commander has been taken ill,” is Cassandra’s code for “I will not give the Commander his Lyrium, but I refuse to accept his resignation.”

Word was sent that the Inquisitor would return late at night, and Leliana offered to stay up to greet him. 

With a last look at hole in the ceiling, and the snow speckling his sheets, Cullen pulls on his boots and his coat and slides down the ladder. He’s never really gone to Trevelyan in the middle of the night – certainly never woken him up after what must have been a very long day, but this feels urgent, all of a sudden.

The Lyrium in his bottom drawer rings softly as he passes it. Muffled by two layers of wood and the distance, it sings to him, soft and sweet in the draft.

He stops. Rooted to the ground, then reeled in, he’s unlocking his desk and taking out the box. That soft, blue glow is like home, that song like the sweetest chantry choir and it swallows the world. He stares down at the box, at the Lyrium and all the paraphernalia he needs to take it. 

Panic, fury, terror. He swipes it from the desk (along with two inkwells and half of his papers) and the resounding crash snaps him back to reality. Trevelyan is in the doorway, wrapped in a blanket and hiding behind his hands. His hair is down. His forearm is bandaged. He peeks out, and kicks the shattered glass at his feet.

“A simple ‘fuck off’ would have sufficed,” he says.

“I didn’t… I wasn’t trying to hit you, I didn’t even…” Cullen trails off, and wipes the sweat gathering on his brow. “I should be taking it,” he says. “I can’t… I can’t do without it, I should…” he looks desperately over to Trevelyan. 

“But… You were doing so well,” he says. He comes in, and shuts the door behind him. “I can help for the moment. We can talk about it in the morning.”

“No,” says Cullen. “No… Distractions. Solutions. I answer to you. Either tell me to take it, or tell me to leave. That’s it. I can’t perform like this.”

“I don’t want you to leave. I don’t want you back on the Lyrium, but I certainly don’t want you to leave.”

Trevelyan shuffles under the blanket, and begins to gnaw his fingernails. 

“If our… relationship is preventing you from making objective decisions, then perhaps… Perhaps we should end it,” Cullen mutters. It’s cruel. Trevelyan accuses Cullen of emotionally blackmailing him, and Cullen… Cullen can hardly stand, never mind respond. He falls back against his desk.

Trevelyan rushes to his side and presses a palm to his forehead and then inspects his face. His fingertips linger on the dark circles beneath Cullen’s eyes.

“And you feel like this all of the time?” he asks. 

“For the last two weeks.”

Trevelyan sighs, and presses their foreheads together. It’s odd. Intimate. No kisses follow; no grabbing.

“Fine,” he says. “We’ll talk to Cassandra in the morning…. In fact, I have Lyrium in my quarters you could have right now, if you’re sure.”

“Alright.”

“It’s not though, is it?” Cullen doesn’t know. “Shit.”

The walk to Trevelyan’s quarters feels like it takes years, and he’s lost in his head the whole way. It is still snowing.

How long before it takes his sense? He’s met old Templars before; doddering fools who barely remember their own names. He’s seen addicts in the gutter, clawing the walls and screaming for a dose. He watched smugglers tear holes in his city and compromise the integrity of his order and the security of their charges.

“It isn’t right, you know,” Trevelyan says, almost on cue. “Putting you all on this stuff. There must be another way. The Seekers, after all.” Cullen can’t tell if he’s talking to him or himself.

“Well it’s too late now,” Cullen mutters. “I’ve made my bed.”

Trevelyan grunts, and unlocks the door to his quarters with a wave of his hand. He has to haul Cullen up the stairs, and looks like he might have pulled something when he finally dumps Cullen on his bed.

He throws up a wisp to light the room, a little yellow thing, while he searches through his pack. 

Cullen looks at his hands, and in the light, and through the haze, they look golden. The whole room looks golden, and Cullen gazes up at the wisp like it’s some holy thing. 

But it isn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u again in advance for comments, kudos and bookmarks!!

**Author's Note:**

> Golly it's been a while since I wrote fic. 
> 
> Thanks in advance for any Kudos and comments and bookmarks praise andraste etc etc


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